The Books

“Confounded reviewers attempted to categorize the Books’ music as electro-acoustic sound collage, laptop, glitch, folktronica, cut-up indie bluegrass etcetera, but we prefer to think of it as blipworld/fakegrass/speedblues/chamberlick/eccentrock/countryandeastern/glitch postanything music with samples.” —Musicaobscura.com

Cult-band duo the Books are hard to define. Cello, guitar, bass, samplers, and a collapsible movie screen are all part of their live set. Created from a growing collection of found field recordings and lost film/video clips, their performances employ richly varied palettes of sounds, textures, and influences. Scavenged from the immediacy of old-time folk through wonderfully twisted Americana as well as the complexity of modernism and the building blocks of language, the Books grow their music organically by association and serendipity, full of silence and space, humor and absurdity. Awarded Best Recording in 2005 by WIRE magazine, Lost and Safe marks a new and beautifully strange stage in the evolution of 21st-century acoustic-electronic music..